What do Bane, Doomsday, Carnage, and Azrael have in common?

Four of the biggest comic book characters of the 90's who, inexplicably to some, are still kicking around their respective universes to this day.  Two of them,  Doomsday and Carnage, are getting a renewed focus with the "Reign of Doomsday" story arc and the new "Carnage" mini-series while Bane is featured every month in "Secret Six" and a different take on Az has a monthly as well. 

So what is it about these character that keeps them hanging around long after one would think their expiration dates had passed?  And what is it that makes these characters, and others like them, inherently flawed?  And why am I thinking about this at all?

Well the answer to the last one is pretty simple.  It's because of "Reign of Doomsday" that these thoughts came back into my brain.  See I bear a certain love for the whole "Death/Funeral/Reign/Hunter/Prey" saga that introduced Doomsday to the comic book world starting in 1992 and, as far as I was concerned, ended his existence as well.  It was probably a few years after it actually happened, but I became aware of Doomsday no longer being dead, and thought "wow, that's stupid".  I mean, being left at the absolute end of time, trapped in entropy, seemed like a pretty solid indication of death. I felt like Dan Jurgens was doing his best to kill off the character he helped bring into the Super-verse, and did so in a fashion that was pretty tough for any other writer to get out off.  Well, obviously I was wrong, and the "monster that killed Superman" was unleashed once again for whatever purpose.

Skip over to the Batman corner of DC comics at roughly the same time (October 1992 & Jan. 1993) where Denny O'Neil & Chuck Dixon introduce Azrael & Bane in to the Bat-Family.  "Sword of Azrael" was a mini that brought another protege into the Bat-Cave in the form of Jean Paul Valley and seemed like a pretty off handed mini with no long term purpose.  "Vengeance of Bane" was a one-shot that gave us some guy in prison obsessed with Bats for no real reason other than some nightmares he had as a kid.  Like "Sword", well written and drawn,  but seemingly little purpose in the grand scheme of things.  The story that unfolded over the next several months/years would see Bane break Bruce Wayne's back, Azrael take over the mantle of The Bat and crush Bane, Az go crazy, Bruce eventually take back the cape & cowl, while Bane returns to form in "Vengeance of Bane II" after kicking his Venom addiction.  Meanwhile Azrael does a lot of nothing for 100 issues and eventually gets the "his body was never found" death scene until he shows up as a Black Lantern during "Blackest Night".  There's a lot more to both of their stories than that, but let's face it, most of it was blargh.

About two years before any of those three characters were introduced, Marvel Comics brought in Carnage, the even more evil version of Venom, needed because Venom had been left on a desert island thinking Spider-Man was dead.  So Carnage (who was like a Joker-ized Venom) takes on Spider-Man and Venom, gets stopped, then recruits damn near every villian in the history of...well ever...for "Maximum Carnage", gets reabsorbed by Venom, and eventually tossed into the sun by The Sentry after quite some time away from the spotlight.

Now, with all that said about their back story, the question I'm looking at is why the hell are they still around after all this time and why have they, creatively, failed so miserably? And why do I feel Bane is the only one who could have expanded beyond his creation?

Essentially the problem stems from these characters only being created for one express purpose: Doomsday kills Superman, Bane breaks Batman, Azrael becomes Batman, and Carnage replaces Venom.  So once they accomplish those goals and the heroes eventually get their revenge, what happens?  Where do they go from there?  In the case of all of them, they basically go nowhere.

None of those characters ever progressed beyond their origins because no writer bothered to give them any deeper motivations or characterizations beyond step one.  Doomsday and Carnage popped sales in their initial introductions because readers knew something cool was going to happen.  Once Knightfall got rolling, Bane and Azrael's intital appearances jumped in value as well.  But as for the characters themselves, well they were stuck.  

Bane and Azrael are the two I'm most familiar with so I'll start with them, and this is a conversation my friend and I have had in the past, as well as something I wrote about several years ago on the old Wizard World message board.  Bane's sole purpose was to break Batman and take Gotham.  He accomplished the first goal, and thus the second goal if only for a few issues.  Once AzBats broke him in a very public fashion, the only thing left for the character as he stood then was to face Bruce Wayne once more so Brucie could face his demon and conquer it.  Unfortunately, and probably in order to prolong the characters' existence, that confrontation never really happened.  "Vengeance of Bane II" wasn't quite it, their "Legacy" confrontation was the most satisfying, the "Gotham Knights, we might be related" thing was silly, and I think his "Infinite Crisis" apperance (he breaks Judo Master's back) sums up his whole character.  He's the guy who broke Batman's back, nothing more than that...no matter what any writer has done with him. I always held out hope someone would make him more, and from what I understand Gail Simone has taken steps in that direction with "Secret Six" (of which I have only read a couple issues).  I'm interested in checking it out to see what she has done with a character that I wanted to become a strong member of Batman rogue gallery, but have felt that no writer has known how to evolve him.

The Jean Paul Valley Azrael was the exact same.  Denny O'Neil flat out said he was created with the sole purpose of temporarily replacing Bruce Wayne as Batman, and no other reason.  Thus his backstory was pretty bare bones, his character was virtually non-existent (computer geek at Gotham U with no social skills), and there was this whole System thing in his head.  During the build-up to his run as AzBats, JPV started to show some character beyond the tech-nerd (if overly violent and obsessive can be called personality) but all that disappeared as soon as Wayne dethroned him.  JPV spent the next 100 issues of his own series wandering around the world at the whims of others, never truly developing a personality of any depth beyond that of his intial introduction, and "married" to Batman more or less.  He had no identity outside of Batman, fought Bat Villains, did Bat Missions, and was as enthralling a character as a block of wood.  If there's a reason why the current "Azrael" series is so divorced from the ideas of the original, I would surmise that it is because of how damaged the concept of the original Az mythos are.  The Order of St. Dumas, the System, LeHah, all felt damaged and pointless by the end of the run and I think the fact that a 100 issue series only warrants 100 or so words on Wikipedia is very indicative of how little was done with this character.

Doomsday's story arc was fine up until he was resurrected sometime after "Hunter/Prey".  He rampaged, killed Superman, they meet again after both are revealed to have lived, and Superman faces his fears & his demon and wins.  Great character arc, it told the origin of the villain in the process, and allowed the hero to conquer & move on.  I understand bringing back popular characters, but I'll never get bringing them back with no real story to tell.  I won't speak specifally on anything written between "H/P" and now, because I haven't read a damn thing save Wiki pages and internet recaps, but I have read the first part of "Reign of Doomsday" and I think that issue alone screams of the problem.  Doomsday is the same now as he was nearly 20 years ago, his character growth seems to be limited to his ability to grow new powers and that's not very interesting nor does it justify keeping him around all this time.  There was some potential in the idea of Doomsday growing a heart & soul but that didn't last too long.  I'm going to continue to check out "Reign of Doomsday" if only to see how DC justifies this story, but I'll be damned if I pay for it. 

And the same goes for Carnage.  How a character who was so devoid of anything interesting managed to notch #90 in Wizard's Top 100 Villains is beyond me.  His claim to fame is that he was supposed to be a Venom replacement but never actually replaced him.  Instead he occupied space, was the subject of one of the most critically-panned stories of the 90's, pointless mini's, and got tossed into the sun.  I'm not sure if that "New Avengers" panel was an expression of Bendis' thoughts on the 616-version of the character, but he did use it in Ultimate-land with a different sort of origin story.  Now the character is coming back in a new mini and I am wondering why.  Is it because Venom is being transformed into a hero character just like in the 90's? I don't know, but I guess I will wait and see when the mini wraps up.  I just don't get the neccessity for it, nor the draw of a character who had no purpose after his first three issue arc. 

All of these 90's era creations suffered (and may continue to suffer) from a lack of identity of their own.  The Joker, Magneto, Dr. Doom, Scarecrow, those are all examples of characters who can show up in other books and not feel totally out of place.  Doomsday, Bane, Carnage, and Azrael are all so entwined in their respective birth-books that their appearance without Spidey, Bats, or Supes feels wrong.  They can't exist without them, and as such, are really not all that interesting of a character.  Now, I firmly believe both Bane and JPV-Azrael have/had all the potential in the world to become something more.  One never had the opportunity, while the other is being given second life by Gail Simone.  Doomsday & Carnage, not so much. 

Characters can, and sometimes should, fade away, even ones who are responsible for killing The Man of Steel.  The question is, can the people who grew up reading these characters realize that instead of wanting to fulfill their dreams of writing said characters?  Who knows....